An important business process is the transportation of goods through a manufacturing process or supply chain/distribution network. During transportation through such channels, which may include several links and involve significant time periods (transport via land, sea and/or air, storage in one or more warehouses, etc.), products are susceptible to many potential harms. For example, goods may be misdirected, damaged, tampered with, and/or exposed to adverse environmental conditions. For certain goods, it is often useful, and in some cases critical, to know whether goods received at a destination location have been subjected to any such harms.
Conventional methods of determining whether goods have been exposed to these harms have relied on human intervention and other potentially time consuming and/or unreliable mechanisms. A need exists for improved methods and apparatuses for evaluating the pedigree and/or integrity of goods received at a destination.